Posts filed in IT

Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold have filed a new patent that could change the way we read textbooks, and possibly the way we learn, forever.

Bored of reading the same textbooks, the same old way? Well, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold, the duo behind an invention that can actually slow hurricanes, are looking to change that. In 2012 they filed a patent for a device that will have the capability to “automatically create a customized video snippet from any random selection of text,” according to GeekWire. That means that as you read a textbook on, say, a tablet or your phone, that device could generate a video based on the content of the textbook–turning a boring old piece of text into essentially a short film.

Fail Numero Uno: Let’s begin with that bastion of the Ivy League, Cornell University. It seems that the school’s stalwart repositories of knowledge, its libraries, have been used for some non-academic purposes, namely the filming of pornographic videos. Perhaps… the videos were an ironic take on the cinematic genre, perhaps, an homage if you will, to youth and freedom and self-expression. Perhaps it was just your standard porn featuring a young lady engaged in some solo activity and co-starring Carpenter Hall, the Engineering School’s library.

One student, who (in the pursuit of education, I am sure) watched the video before the (I assume “frantic”) campus administrators removed the link, offers this analysis: “She’s facing a window (the one by the bike racks) and it’s broad daylight. And at one point you can see people behind her studying.”

Fail Numero Dos: Ever accidentally hit “reply all” on an email and immediately realize you’ve spammed dozens of people? Well, imagine that to the tune of forty thousand people. That’s just what happened to NYU student Max Wiseltier, who innocently was trying to simply reply to the bursar’s office. He realized his error almost instantly and tried to do the right thing by apologizing to those who received the email meant only for the bursar. It should have ended there. But, as the campus’ newspaper reported, Max’s email “triggered a rare, University-wide revelation.” That revelation? “We simultaneously realized that any message, complaint, whim, link, video, or GIF could be sent to nearly 40,000 people in an instant.”

It didn’t take long for thousands of students to act on this delightful way to terrorize their campus. The system, unsurprisingly, soon crashed. Not long after, it was discovered that incorrect listserv software was attached to the original message, sparking what is now going down in campus legend as the “Reply-apocalypse.” Whoops.